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BOND ART
86
COLLECTING
IS AN ADVENTURE
DAKIS JOANNOU
C
ONVERSATION WITH DAKIS JOANNOU,
ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT CONTEMPORARY ART COLLECTORS TODAY
AND FOUNDER OF THE DESTE ART
FOUNDATION
We meet Dakis Joannou at his home in Athens,
Greece.
His house is reached up a steep drive, overlooking
the city and built around a courtyard. It was
extended, he says, to accommodate his art
collection.
A “Mount Olympus of art”, we comment.
One can spot the art lover and a serious, life-long
collector as distinct from the art investor/ opportunist from the way they show their collection.
Dakis Joannou delights in giving us the tour
personally, drawing attention to every detail and
explaining how it fits in with the layout of the
building.
We go past the striking Maurizio Cattelan taxidermied horse plunging into the wall and into a
marble-clad, museum size room, dedicated for
the most part to Jeff Koons’ work. On the way,
Joannou points to a metal grille on the floor which
could easily be overlooked as a fixture. It is, in fact,
another art installation, Man in Drain (1993-94),
showing a male torso pierced by a drain.
Joannou is well known for collecting Jeff Koons’
works, having started well before and even contributed to Koons’ iconic status of today, so it
comes as no surprise to see the room dominated
by the artist’s work from different production
periods: from the giant “Hulk” canvasses to the
Michael Jackson and Bubbles porcelain statue to
the stainless steel train carrying Bourbon.
The marble room, Joannou says, often hosts parties, with the most memorable of all being the new
millennium party when the entire room was turned
into a casino.
their work. The collection is 100% contemporary
art, mostly by American artists, with works by, to
name a few, Jeff Koons, Robert Gober, Charles Ray,
Maurizio Cattelan, Jenny Holzer, Kiki Smith, Verne
Dawson, Cindy Sherman, Mike Kelley, Chris Ofili,
Christopher Wool, Ashley Bickerton, George
Condo, Mark Grotjahn, Pawel Althamer, Wangechi
Mutu, David Altmejd, Barnaby Furnas, Tim Noble &
Sue Webster, David Shrigley, John Bock, Allan
McCollum, Joseph Kosuth, Piotr Uklanski, Gillian
Wearing, Richard Prince, Dan Colen, Roberto
Cuoghi, Friedrich Kunath, John Dogg, Dan Attoe .....
FURTHER ALONG THE GYM HOUSES FINE LIMITED EDITION
Dakis Joannou began collecting “seriously” in 1985,
but has had an abiding love of art his entire life.
One ante room bears testimony to his student
days’ passion for art and displays a row of rather
extraordinary figurines he acquired in Italy where
he studied architecture (he had to learn Italian in
order to pursue his studies) after completing a degree in engineering in the US.
He could have happily remained the eternal student, he says, but had to join the family business,
construction, at the end of these 10 years of academic endeavours.
The tour of the house is circular and circuitous and
we end where we began, but not before seeing a
succession of gallery style rooms displaying a diverse and eclectic, collection, reflecting the collector’s personal relationship with the artists and
PRINTS OF RACHEL MCLISH. DOES HE TRAIN, I ASK?
Not much, but his wife does.
His wife makes a brief entrance as we embark on
the conversation, looking remarkably youthful,
in fact.
The room where we finally sit is decorated with art
as well as pictures of his close family - children and
grand-children.
We sit on a low 60s cream leather sofa and he
opens one of the Beyond Black books I have
brought for him.
He dwells briefly on the Thomas Flohr profile and
his yacht, designed, he says by the same designer,
Ivana Porfiri who worked on his yacht, Guilty. This
is a perfect opening for my first question.
“ SO TELL ME ABOUT THIS BOAT OF YOURS… “
“ I decided to give the project to Ivana Porfiri.”,
recalls Joannou.
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Photo of Dakis Joannou by Jean Pigozzi Athens 2008
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Instalation A GUEST + A HOST= A GHOST, Athens 2009
Photo: Stefan Altenburger
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Instalation Fracture figure, Athens 2008
photo: Stefan Altenburger
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BOND ART
91
I ask him about the explosion of contemporary art
prices that preceded the recession and how hype
has conspired with opportunism to drive them well
beyond some pieces’ intrinsic worth.
He goes on the describe Porfiri’s style which is to
take a standard boat shape and make some
changes to it, although not many structural ones.
She then does the inside.
With his boat, designer and client decided to do
“something completely fresh”.
“I wanted a boat that was completely flat and very
open”, says Joannou, “I wanted a sun deck, dining,
saloon, kitchen, cabins downstairs and my bedroom on top, so that the whole thing became like
a platform”.
“Talent will always out”, says Joannou philosophically.
He, of course, started collecting some of today’s
most bankable artists when they were still relatively
unknown, so the satisfaction of having made the
right decisions, commercially as well as aesthetically, must be enormous.
Joannou didn’t want the yacht to exceed 110/115’
in size so as to be able to get into smaller marinas.
The hull Ivana found, however, was 120 ft. In order
to accommodate her client she simply cut off the
nose of the hull, which immediately gave the boat
a particular character of its own.
“That was the key idea”, says Joannou.
Still, the man is totally unprepossessing and while
he lights up when he talks of his new projects, it is
without a trace of smugness.
He is not investing, he says, but buying to add to
the collection.
Does he sell? Yes, occasionally - even museums
sell, else one runs out of space.
In conversation with Jeff Koons, he mentioned he
wanted a colourful boat, so Koons suggested a 1st
World War camouflage (this was done to confuse
the enemy as to the boat’s intentions and directions).
WHO WAS THE FIRST ARTIST WHOSE WORK HE BOUGHT?
As it transpired, Ivana had had the exact same
idea, but didn’t quite know how to break it to her
client.
“The whole project fitted together”, says Joannou,
“as the design was so well integrated” - giving him
the most unconventional yacht of all times.
“Beyond the ordinary”.
Instalation Fracture figure
Athens 2008, photo: Stefan Altenburger
Jeff Koons was the first artist he started to collect,
he clarifies. As for buying, anything from a very
early age…
The first thing he bought was a very interesting
photograph – a combination of pop art and
metaphysics triangle in a sphere - because it combined elements of his personal journey: pop art
(USA) and the metaphysical (Italy). “I bought it”,
he says, “because it fitted my experiences between
New York and Rome”.
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Instalation Fracture Figure, Athens 2008
photo: Stefan Altenburger
How does he choose what he buys? Is it love at first
sight, or the concept of the piece or the texture?
Everything has to work, he says, and when you look
at a work of art, you have to connect with it.
Joannou establishes personal relationships with
the artists he collects: he befriends them and
builds a rapport with them, but doesn’t ask a lot of
questions about their work.
“We just talk”, he says.
“I thought it was a sin to collect art”.
How so, I ask?
“I thought collecting was rich people buying
trophies to put in their living rooms. I couldn’t
understand it.”
DOES HE BUY ONE OFFS OR DOES HE COLLECT WORKS BY
The Deste Art Foundation was born, some shows
followed - in Greece and in Swizterland - then
Joannou met Koons, they “clicked” and the rest, as
they say, is history.
Then, during lunch in Athens a friend recommended that he established an art foundation as
one way of being involved in art.
The Joannou concept took shape in the course of
a dinner with Dennis Streetman in NY, 3 or 4 years
ago. Instead of buying the most important piece
in a fashion collection, Streetman suggested they
buy 5 pieces and ask artists to interpret them
either through photography, poetry or any other
artistic medium and publish the interpretations in
the form of books.
Each interpretation is naturally very subjective.
THE SAME ARTISTS?
“With some I do, some I don’t.”, he says, “I have
several one offs and I can collect others’ work
extensively”.
”It’s important to do this because you give the
collection presence, you don’t just collect masterpieces. You create a juxtaposition of various artists
and varied artworks.”
He set up the foundation, he says, because quite
simply, he wanted to be involved in art, yet didn’t
initially want to collect.
He is the only one involved with the foundation
and runs it with a small number of dedicated staff.
HOW DID HE COME UP WITH IDEA OF FASHION AS ART?
He’d been playing with the idea for a long time, he
says. The idea of fashion as art fascinated him, but
he lacked focus. Then Artforum magazine published that picture of Issey Miyake on its cover in
1982.
The interpretations to date have been by:
Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak
Juergen Teller
Helmut Lang
With Patrizia Cavalli scheduled for 2010
“This is a very special approach, says Joannou,
and the first experiment of its kind”
HAS HE EVER COLLECTED FINE ART?
“No, the only thing I did when I started the collection, was to buy some pieces to give reference
to the collection and to put young unknown artists
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Instalation Fracture Figure, Athens 2008
photo: Stefan Altenburger
into context. Twenty years later, they are the
context and the supporting pieces are sold.”
them to another level. Contemporary art is relevant to what is happening now”.
He doesn’t collect country-specific art, he says he just looks at the merit of the work. The Deste
Foundation’s purpose, however, is to highlight the
work of Greek artists and place them on the international scene.
Dakis Joannou’s personal relevance on the global
art scene is unquestionable. The scale and focus
of his collection, as well as Joannou’s drive and
ideas, make it one of the most remarkable and
interesting privately owned contemporary art
collections today.
HOW IMPORTANT IS ART IN GENERAL?
He can’t judge this from other people’s point of
view, he says, but people in general need art.
Everyone has something on their wall, whether
Chinese embroidery or photography or anything
else. Different people have a different relationship
with their art.
HOW DOES HE WANT TO BE REMEMBERED?
He says he is not concerned with posterity, but with
now. What he does, he says through art - that’s his
language and his tool.
Yet Joannou doesn’t feel that art’s purpose is to
influence public opinion in any way.
“Its purpose is to enrich people’s minds and take
THE DESTE FOUNDATION
The foundation was established by Dakis Joannou
is 1983. Its current program focuses on “exploring
the connections between art and fashion, music,
film, architecture, design and contemporary
culture” and includes the Hydra Slaughterhouse
Project which hosts a series of interestingly curated
exhibitions by different artists in this sensitively
restored building, The Deste Fashion Collection
project - unique in its concept and approach providing “a fruitful dialogue between fashion and
art” as well as a biannual prize to a Greek artist of
merit.
The Foundation has hosted more than 600 artists
to date and among those exhibited at the time of
our visit, Mauritzio Cattelan, Urs Fisher, Jeff Koons,
David Altmejd and Seth Price, were the best represented in terms of body of work.
The “Skin Fruit” exhibition, New York
The New Museum is currently hosting the Jeff
Koons curated exhibition “Skin Fruit: Selections
from the Dakis Joannou Collection”.
“Skin Fruit” is the first exhibition in the United States
of the Athens-based Dakis Joannou Collection,
renowned as one of the leading collections of
contemporary art in the world. This is also the first
exhibition curated by Koons, whose early work
inspired the evolution of the Joannou collection.
“Skin Fruit” includes over 100 works by 50 international artists spanning several generations. Focusing
on the body in contemporary art, the exhibition
spotlights the age-old preoccupation with the
human form as a vessel of and vehicle for experience. Koons’s title “Skin Fruit” alludes to notions of
genesis, evolution, original sin, and sexuality. Skin
and fruit evoke the essential tensions between
interior and exterior, between what we see and
what we consume.
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